Weeping is acceptance

If North Americans have a common god it is happiness. The mantra goes something like, “I just want to be happy” or “As long as you are happy. . . .”

A young friend was thinking a similar way about health, particularly healthy children. She notices how many times people say about babies, “As long as it is healthy. . . .” as if having a child that was not perfectly well would be a terrible disaster. For that reason, good health and certainly enough money could be called our gods too, but the real god is happiness because health and money are actually just part of what most people consider necessary to being happy.

I’m reading the same verse today as yesterday, but yesterday I left off the last part of it. The full verse says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

God is a joyful God, but God also weeps with those who weep. John’s gospel tells of the death of Lazarus. Jesus went to the scene and “when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.’” Her grief was deep, yet she knew the power that Jesus had and added to her grief was the idea of “if only.”

Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!” (John 11:32-36)

The Jews thought that Jesus wept because He had lost a good friend, but I don’t think so. He knew that He was about to raise this man from the dead. He also knew that physical death is not the end of life. He would see Lazarus again.

No, I believe that Jesus wept because Mary and her sister Martha wept. He felt their sorrow, and because He is a God of compassion, He wept with those who wept.

It happened once in my life. The details are too personal and perhaps too precious to write into a blog, but one time when my sorrow and grief were deeper than I can bear, Jesus wept with me, and left me with the absolute certainty of His love and identification with my pain. I will never forget His demonstration of compassion.

This is why we must weep with those who weep. People need to know that our god is not happiness. To tell someone to “cheer up” or any equivalent of trying to make them smile or be happy is telling them we will not accept their sorrow. Weeping with them says the opposite, that we love them and are willing to forego our own sense of well-being in order to feel their pain with them.

God does that. While He loves to bring us joy and make us feel wonderful, when we do not, He never rejects our emotions. Instead of telling us to cheer up, He lets us feel our grief and sorrow, but even more, He feels them as deeply as we do and weeps with us.